Everything in the opponents' locker room at Iowa's Kinnick Stadium is pink. The lockers, showers, urinals, telephones. The choice of color has widely been viewed as a funny jab at opposing teams, designed to get into their heads.

Legendary coach Hayden Fry, a college psychology major, believed the pink locker rooms had a "calming" effect on the Hawkeyes' opponents. As in, they could tame the aggression of foes and give Iowa a competitive advantage.

That claim was backed up yesterday by Iowa spokesman Tom Moore in response to a presentation by former Iowa law professor and co-founder of Minnesota-based Gender Justice Jill Gaulding.

In Gaulding's opinion, the locker rooms are "sexist and homophobic" and could be illegal at an institution of higher learning.

To her knowledge, Gaulding said, there’s never been a legal challenge to pink locker rooms. But she said a federal court in Arizona ruled that “shaming practices” of having male prisoners wear pink underwear was deemed a form of punishment that lacked legal justification.

“I think every institution that is using pink or gender as a shaming joke reinforces that idea across the entire culture and that is why it is so harmful,” Gaulding said.

“I certainly do conclude that based on all the things that we’ve been talking about and what I understand are the civil rights laws that it’s actually illegal to have a pink locker room because it’s not OK for a public institution to potentially put out a message that people perceive to be based on a sexist or homophobic slur,” she added. “It’s not OK for them to put up a banner that says it’s bad to be a girl. It’s not OK for them to build a pink locker room that conveys that same idea.”

Which begs the question, are the Iowa locker rooms a thinly veiled, light-hearted attempt to gain a competitive advantage or a homophobic shame technique that sets a bad example?